


The Worst Acolyte

by blackberrywars



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Acolyte! Lambert, Angry Lambert, But Nenneke Still Loves Her, Canon-Typical Violence, Fem! Aiden, Fem! Lambert, Healing, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Lambert Becomes An Acolyte Of Melitele, Lambert Is Worst Acolyte, Lambert Likes Alchemy, Lambert Swears (The Witcher), Multi, Papa Vesemir, Selkie! Lambert, Sexual Tension, So Does Aiden, Stupid! Vesemir, multi-chapter fic, no beta we die like renfri
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:28:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28042428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackberrywars/pseuds/blackberrywars
Summary: Before Vesemir had taken the girl, the woman had wrapped her in the cloak she wore now, tucking it tight around her small body. Looking closer at the thing, he saw what he’d apparently missed —his child surprise was selkie, and so, presumably, was her mother.Fuck.Or: Lambert, rather than being taken to Kaer Morhen and becoming a witcher, gets dumped on the steps of the Temple of Melitele to become an acolyte. Destiny, however, still has her meet the Kaer Morons, Jaskier, Aiden, and more. She's gonna do great.
Relationships: Aiden/Lambert (The Witcher), Eskel & Lambert (The Witcher), Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Lambert, Lambert & Nenneke (The Witcher), Lambert & Vesemir (The Witcher)
Kudos: 22





	1. A Feral Surprise

**Author's Note:**

> First non-one-shot attempt at a fic! Wish my ADHD brain luck on coming up with ideas and wish my Adderall brain luck on executing them.

“For fucks’ sake, I’m not going to eat you! Just shut your mouth and stay in the saddle like a good little girl —and stop trying to bite me! I’m wearing armor.”

His tiny, malnourished child surprise did not obey even one of Vesemir’s commands. In fact, being told what to only served to make her even more determined to rip a chunk out of him, going so far as to climb on poor Fern’s neck to reach his face. Her red, matted hair covered half of her dirt-smeared, bruised face as she shrieked, “Fuck you! And there’s no armor on your ears, is there? If there were, you wouldn’t be telling me to shut up!”

Sharp little teeth dug into the top of his ear, and really, he shouldn’t have been so shocked. The feral creature masquerading as a fisherman’s daughter was all canines and furious desperation from the moment he’d claimed her. Before threatening him with her teeth, it’d been knees and elbows. That knowledge didn’t stop him from reeling back and letting her fall to the hard ground and taking a piece with her. For a moment, he thought he’d killed her. She was so small, looked barely six years old when he’d been told by her mother that she’d just passed eight summers. A cloak, the only thing she’d been allowed to take, drowned her skinny frame entirely, and collapsed on the road, she looked like nothing so much as a fallen sack of grain. Then she lifted her head and spat. A raw, stringy chunk of his ear, surrounded by a small puddle of his blood, muddled into the dirt. She’d even chewed it a little. 

“What the fuck, you feral goblin! Were you raised by a _dog??_ ”

“Yeah, and he handed me off to you, so now I’m _your problem, you crusty bitch!_ He wasn’t even the one who taught me to bite!”

“Then who the fuck did?”

Vesemir clutched his throbbing wound, feeling the blood seeping between his fingers. Not an unfamiliar feeling, per se, but usually caused by an opponent that reached higher than his navel when they stood up. He hadn’t smelled anyone in the house except for the girl, her downtrodden mother, and her red-nosed father, though the dead fish might have overpowered their scent if there were. 

The little girl only raised her defiant chin higher. Blood dripped down her neck from a cut there, presumably gotten when she fell, but she paid it no mind. Her grey-blue eyes glared like the steel of his sword as she pushed herself back on unsteady feet. And she started yelling again, “Mama taught me! She taught me to keep my cloak and to bite anyone who tried to take it or me. And you’re doing both! So fuck you!”

That explained it, sort of. For her own part, the mother didn’t look much like a biter. Huddled under her husband, clutching her daughter to her chest, she looked like every other beaten woman he’d ever met. Worn, tired, and gravely resigned. Bruises peeked out from the top of her ragged collar, and the way she held her torso spoke of ribs that had been abused and not given time to set properly. There was a storm in her eyes when he’d arrived at the doorstep to take the girl away, but it died out quickly with an openhanded strike from her husband. The man —Rogir Wilkinson, an obviously drunkard bastard— roughly grabbed the child from her and shoved his current problem into Vesemir’s arms, which she immediately tried to pummel.

A cloak, though… Certainly, Vesemir could understand wanting to keep your children warm; he’d raised more than a few trainees in the icy Kaedwani mountains. But to so viciously want her daughter to protect it? Before Rogir had taken the girl, the woman had wrapped her in the cloak she wore now, tucking it tight around her small body. Looking closer at the thing, Vesemir saw what he’d apparently missed —the girl was selkie, and so, presumably, was her mother. The cloak, or pelt, more accurately, boasted dense fur spotted with what Vesemir had first assumed to be mud. Looking at them now, the dark splotches were obviously part of the coat’s pattern.

Long ago, the seal-women had been friends of sailors and fishermen. Many had split their time between the sea and the land, shedding their skins to stay with their human lovers for a time before returning to their homes underwater. When Vesemir was still a boy, he had heard a ballad about a prince who had wed a selkie queen, uniting their kingdoms. He never sought to trap her, and their agreement was seasonal. She stayed with him for spring and summer, and left for the sea in fall and winter —her loneliness in those months without him turned the water icy and violent, but the seas warmed and calmed upon each reunion. So the sea shifted and so it has remained, as any sailor would say. A tale, surely, but a lovely one. Unfortunately, as men are wont, they got greedy. They weren’t satisfied by young, beautiful wives who bore them children and helped them herd schools of fish into their nets. They wanted to control. When their seal-wives were asleep, they stole their pelts, so they could not leave. Hidden in a well, locked in a chest, or buried beneath a cellar, half the selkies’ souls shriveled. They died, in a way. The girl’s mother had died, in that way.

Vesemir reassured her, keeping his hands away and his voice soft, “I won’t steal your pelt, girl. You don’t have to worry about that.” Selkies weren’t beasts, and Vesemir would never steal one’s pelt, and certainly not that of a child. 

His eyes _burned_. How he hadn’t noticed her pick up a handful of dirt and throw it, he would never tell the masters. Loud little feet ran, stumbling away towards what Vesemir knew was the shore, less than half a mile away, and he quietly thanked Old Barmin for teaching him how to track blindfolded. Fuck, but the little beast had gotten far. She’d learned to run as well as bite, apparently, but not quietly, and soon enough, he snatched out to circle a skinny, malnourished arm and lock his grip. He would _not_ be touching her pelt.

“Let me go, you fucking pervert! Let go!”

He would not dignify that with a response. Instead, he marched them to the waves he could hear, dragging the girl kicking and screaming at him, and sat down, pulling her down next to him when the water lapped at his boots. Keeping a tight hold on her upper arm, he slowly washed his eyes, and his ear for good measure. The salt burned too, but at least it was clean. He had half a thought to clean the girl’s chin off, too, but he suspected that wouldn’t go over well. Beside him, she’d fallen quiet. Once he turned to see what miracle had occurred, he found her biting through her lip, adding more blood to what had already dried there. Her little chin still pointed at him. Her eyes, too angry, too resigned for a beating to belong to a child.

“How do _you_ know about it?” she asked, glaring as hatefully as a six-year-old had ever glared, pale ginger eyebrows drawn tight together, “And why wouldn’t you steal it?”

Vesemir groaned, because of course that was it. He was becoming as tactless as Geralt, because the alternative was that he had learned it from Vesemir, and that just wasn’t acceptable. After growing up with a shell of her mother in the house, she would be wary of any men knowing about her pelt. He sighed, “I’m a Witcher, girl. It’s my job to know about non-humans.”

“Know about them to kill them, you mean!” she shrieked, trying to stand and wrench her arm from Vesemir’s grasp, presumably to try running again, “Let me go!”

Fuck, he really was bad at this. He yanked her back down in front of him with her back to the sea, but let go of her arm.

“No, I don’t kill selkies, they’re not beasts. And I won’t kill you, no matter how aggravating you are.”

“ _Liar!_ ”

“I’m not a liar, girl. I’m many things I’m not proud of, but I don’t lie. I won’t kill you. I won't take your pelt. We’re on our way to the Temple of Melitele Ellander, so the priestesses there can take care of you.”

Like everything else he’d done so far, that only made her madder, but at least she’d stopped trying to run. She'd stopped, so she could scream at him: “No! Melitele’s not even fucking _real_ , and I don’t want some fanatic old hags to tell me she is. And I don’t want to leave the sea.”

Vesemir couldn’t fault her for not wanting to leave the sea, selkie that she was, but Ellander was closer to it than Kaer Morhen. There, the water was fresh on the rare occasions it was liquid, and Vesemir wasn’t sure the girl could be trained. He certainly wouldn’t leave her at a poor house. Nenneke always liked him to owe her favors, anyways… after this, he’d owe her several more.

“I have an old friend there, she could take you to visit the coast on occasion. It’s either take you there or to Kaedwen, even farther from the ocean. And Nenneke might be old, but I think you might like her. She’s mean, like you.”

The girl snorted what might have been a giggle, then immediately frowned. Her tiny face scrunched. Vesemir may or may not have found it incredibly endearing, though he wouldn't speak it aloud for the sake of his other ear. Then she buried her forehead into the corner of her pelt, and sighed, “Why do I have to go?”

For the first time that evening, she sounded sad rather than furious, and Vesemir ached a little, in the place in his chest he didn’t let himself dwell on. He said, “It’s too late to return you, the Law of Surprise has placed you with me. And they’ll treat you well at the Temple, better than they treated you at home.” A poor consolation, but the only one he had. In that house, her father likely would have sold her pelt to a man twenty years her senior for booze. It wasn't unheard of, especially in fishing towns. Seeing the fire in the girl’s eyes, it would have been a tragedy to see it put out the next time he passed through.

“Bullshit. You didn't have to fucking take me! Was Destiny gonna march down here and beat you til you vomited if you didn't? Huh, motherfucker?

And there it was. Vesemir just scooped the still-screaming girl over his shoulder and marched back to the road. Still, he couldn’t make himself regret the sand in his leathers. Fern, the angel of a sweet-tempered mare, hadn’t reacted at all to the chaos, and had simply stopped to graze at the long, seaside grass. She would receive an apple as soon as they made camp. Which would be _right fucking now_. 

If Vesemir was going to present the girl —Lambert— at the Temple, he was going to need all the rest he could get.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Forty years later, Lambert has spent too long away from the sea, and it's pissing everybody off, so she gets kicked out of the temple until she tastes some salt water.

Arms inadvisably piled with variable ceramic jars and clay pots, Lambert breezed into the kitchens. Not only was she running low on supplies to make her potions, her favorite pestle had just broken in two and surely no one would care if she borrowed the communal one for an hour or two. After all, the tinctures she made were for the good of the whole temple and every unfortunate bastard who begged aid or asylum at their steps. Her contraceptive and abortive tonics had proven quite popular. She’d made a very pretty penny for her sisters in service to Melitele, even as Nenneke frowned at her for it. Apparently “keeping women maidens” was a “deliberate misinterpretation of our purpose.” The old hag had given in with a smile and a shake of her greying head eventually though. If anyone thought to complain, Lambert would even clean it afterward, so as not to poison anyone again. Her free hand closed around the granite.

“And what are you doing with the kitchen pestle?”

And there, in the doorway she’d just cleared, stood Nenneke. As usual, a silky blue wrapping edged with red and yellow covered most of Nenneke’s long, grey braids, and she favored her right hip slightly. The old bat’s wrinkles only emphasized the line of a single greying eyebrow arched high on her broad forehead —an expression Lambert knew very well. It reminded her of a sleeker, less bushy version of Vesemir’s own face. 

“Making breakfast,” Lambert tried. Nevermind the heap of containers in her arms or the smell of medicinal herbs that permeated the air. Nor the fact that the hag knew what happened to her own pestle, because Lambert had spent all of last night complaining about having to make a new one. That grey eyebrow only arched higher. Nenneke condescended like no one else she’d ever met: 

“And I’m sure that means you’ve finished the morning prayer… oh, twenty minutes early? So that you could contribute to our meal?” 

Lambert agreed solemnly, face impassive as the grave, “ _Of course,_ High Priestess. I would never miss the morning prayer, and I’m a wonderful cook.” 

“Then what might you be doing with that cannabis tincture? I can smell it from here, and I don’t think it would be wise to render the whole temple unproductive before noon, don’t you agree?”

“Oh, I thought adding some of its oil into just your meal would be beneficial. It might help your old, aching hips.”

Nenneke paused, her eyebrows coming to level. She pushed herself off the entryway wall —with some stiffness, she noted, amused— and came to stand in front of her. Lambert towered over her, but that didn’t stop Nenneke from grabbing her rebellious charity case’s ear between her nails and dragging that mop of red curls down for a scolding: 

“Insolent brat! You would think the years might have domesticated you a fraction, and yet here you remain, the same insufferable little shit you’ve always been! I should have refused Vesemir when he brought your scrawny ass here. Go help my _devoted_ underlings store their prayer mats, since we both know _you_ didn’t attend.”

Lambert didn’t need another cue to make her exit.

————————————————————————— 

Later that day, after a miserable afternoon of using her _inferior_ pestle to grind up all manner of herbs, spices, and monster parts, Iola appeared in the doorway to her workroom. Angel that she was, she didn’t waltz in unannounced. Teacher’s pet that she was, she had come to collect Lambert and bring her to Nenneke. They walked down the halls companionably. Iola never spoke —on account of a twenty-year strong vow of silence, Lambert was told— but she still had a biting wit, expressed mainly through the quirks of her lips and eyebrows, as well as a formidable side-eye. By the time they got to the hag’s door, she’d already made fun of the new trainees, a man who was a little too attached to one of their statues, and Lambert herself. All without speaking a word. Then she knocked on the heavy, wooden door. From inside came:

“Iola? Do you have the brat-child with you?”

“I’m here, old hag, don’t you worry,” Lambert said while the lock clicked open to reveal an unamused Nenneke. The old priestess just sighed and walked back to her cherry-wood rocking chair, settling into it tiredly. “What’s the occasion?”

“The occasion, brat, is that you’re due a long visit to the shore. You’re restless and it’s pissing me off,” Nenneke palmed her forehead and rested that elbow on the arm of her chair, “It’s been over a year and I know those river-baths don’t sate you. For my sanity and yours, please fucking leave and don’t come back for a month, at least.”

Always blunt, the hag. She was right, though. The itch under Lambert’s skin had grown to a festering scream for the salt of the sea, all while her pelt collected dust in its lockbox. But she’d been busy, ignored the calling in her bones to shift. Between all the potions, creams, and tonics everyone needed regularly and increased demand from the war effort, Lambert had neglected herself. Not to mention, she did lacked some ingredients she needed from the coast… 

“Fine,” Lambert conceded. There was no use delaying it any longer, only more pain. Much as she hated to agree with her old mentor, she couldn’t find a good excuse to argue, especially when just the thought of the coast made her ache. “I’ll leave tonight.”

“Slow down, child, you won’t leave tonight. The nights have just started getting colder, and you could do with some daylight on your pale skin. Look like you were born on Skellige,” Nenneke groused, turning her eyes skyward, likely in prayer. Melitele had never heard her when it came to Lambert and her stubbornness. “You’ll pack your things, sleep a night in your own bed, _go to morning prayer,_ and set off with some food in your belly. You’re getting too thin.”

“Yes, and I’ll dry my hair before I leave the Temple tomorrow, old hag, would that stop you from worrying so much?” 

“Never, brat-child. You’re far too much of a pain in my ass.”

“Tch. I’m a delight.”

Nenneke fixed her with a look and Lambert finally walked up to her mentor for a hug. Her arms were strong around Lambert’s bent torso, and Lambert smiled against her covered hair, as she wound her own around Nenneke’s thick waist. When they parted, Nenneke’s hand found her cheek. 

“Don’t be stupid. I expect to see you back in one piece. Now get out and allow an old woman her rest.”

Lambert went up to her rooms to prepare her bags while Iola sent word that a horse should be prepared for travel. A few woolen dresses, undergarments, toiletries, healing potions, and various empty jars later, there was just enough room for the most important thing on this journey. Behind her dresser, behind a loose brick, sat a small iron chest. As soon as Lambert had the money for it, she had it enchanted to only respond to her hands unlocking it, so that no matter who had the keys, only she could open it. Inside, lay her greatest treasure. A dusty, dense cloak of grey fur covered with black spots was folded and placed into her pack with care.

Tomorrow, she’d be off to the sea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's chapter 2, ya'll! We might have a hint of plot coming, but we'll see.


	3. A Good Start

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Off out of Ellander, Lambert starts her trek for the much-missed sea. Plot later, travel now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been literally two weeks but shit happens! Plot soon, I swear. She'll meet Aiden... eventually.

Iola walked Lambert and the horse to the edge of the Temple’s grounds, past all alms-givers and statue-worshippers. Stroking the blue dun mare on the flank, and skipping such treatment for Lambert, her silent sister turned dark, assessing brown eyes towards her. She pressed her fingers to her chest before reaching them out, as Lambert did the same. Their sign for meeting again. When their fingers touched, they curled their hands back in, palms over hearts, thumbs tucked inwards like a cup. With a last pat to the mare’s back and a knowing look to her, Iola turned back towards the Temple, and Lambert was off.

Ellander, for all its land-lockedness and religious groups, was a fairly decent city, in Lambert’s opinion. The canals kept most of the shit out of the streets, and if they still smelled foul, the sound of running water soothed her, though she’d never admit it. Nothing like the ocean, but still. Couldn’t compare a breeze to a hurricane —she wouldn’t compare this gentle lapping of water along the banks to the roar of waves far offshore. The _smell,_ though. Spring and summer brought the “flower festivals” as she called them to Nenneke’s ire, and then the city stank of them. Sweetpeas for the maiden, plumeria for the mother, dianthus for the crone. And fuck her for still remembering all that bullshit. They made Ellander smell sweeter than usual, but nothing could beat the clean salt and seaweed she could almost taste.

Early autumn, however, meant the city smelled like a market —piss, livestock, and various crops for sale. Farmers selling bushels of wheat, rye, and barley, barrels of apples, flagons of whiskey and wine made with leftover grain. Atop her horse, Lambert’s nose was right above it all, and she silently cursed her blood for subjecting her to it. In the water, it meant the difference between eating and starving, but on land, it mostly meant a headache. Tying a wrap around her face would look too suspicious. She _did_ look too fucking Skelliger for that to be taken as anything but an outlaw trying to mask her face, and it wasn’t custom for Melitele’s priestesses to veil. Fucking old hag. Even her ears couldn’t escape the assault of the city.

To her left, near an apple stand: “E’ tried to charge me _ten crowns_ for a new pot!” a middle-aged woman cried to her daughter, “As though e’ hasn’t been chased out of three cities for selling shit copper!”

Out of an open window: “And don’t forget the fucking eggs this time, darling,” a woman said to her wife, “I refuse to eat porridge again tomorrow.”

Ahead of her, leaning against a sign post he probably couldn’t read: “The baker’s girl? She’s got arms bigger than your legs, lad, girl’d snap your scrawny ass in half first time you tried to lay her!” said a young man to his even younger, skinner friend, “But you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Said man got shoved into another, burlier one by his friend, and so a brawl ensued. The skinny lad and the burly man’s companion got roped in soon enough, but as far as she could tell, they were keeping it fists-only. _‘Men are so fucking stupid.’_ Lambert thought to herself, swiftly rearing her mare away from the tangled mess of sweat and idiocy. She slowed down to watch a young woman, who, with her flour-dusted apron and thick-muscled forearms, might just be the baker’s daughter in question, approach. With an ease even Lambert hadn’t expected, the girl yanked up her scrawny suitor and tossed him onto her broad shoulder. Like a sack of flour. Ruffled and bruised, but otherwise none the worse for wear, he waved at his friend, now pinned to the cobblestones by two burly men, and grinned.

Lucky bastard.

By the time she reached the edge of the city, Lambert still had a decision to make. It would take nearly two weeks until she reached the coast, no matter which way she traveled. As tempting as it would have been to travel the river from Ellander, to Oxenfurt, and then out, her seal form couldn’t handle so much time in freshwater, and she couldn’t carry many supplies that way. A boat was also out of the question. When Nenneke had suggested it that first year at the Temple, citing a dislike for riding horseback, Lambert nearly bit her traitorous fucking finger off. She wouldn’t be trapped by a sailor, be it a pirate or a fisherman. By the end of it, Lambert had been dragged, kicking and screaming, onto a merchant’s barge with Nenneke, a then lesser priestess saddled with a new charge. She raged for the rest of the journey, spitting bile at the woman, sometimes literally. On the way back, they took up with a caravan of troubadours, and Lambert was put to work with the horses as soon as she was tall enough. 

That left two land routes.

First was to go around Vizima and then through the north side of the Brokilon. The Forest might kill any humans, but the dryads let her through, so long as she respected their customs and didn’t fuck around with any important shit. She could take herbs and other flora, if she left the roots behind. There'd be no humans to suffer. If it felt kind, the Forest could get her through faster —time moved strangely there, much like everything else in the damn Brokilon. She had traveled weeks in just hours while in the deep of the greenwoods. On the other hand, harvesting pinprick seeds took time and patience she rather fucking lacked, and there would be nowhere to trade once she was in. Not to mention that the Forest might still be pissed at her for the last time she went through. It held grudges like children, and Lambert could respect that. Couldn’t catch her fucking with it though.

Otherwise, she’d have to travel through miles of fields to Oxenfurt, then travel along the river out of the city until she reached the coast. A more reliable route, that one. Fewer natural dangers to contend with, less distance to cover, more towns to sell her wares in. The mare wouldn’t struggle over the roads and settlements, or even the stretches of land between them. The meadows and smaller woodlands were plenty with useful herbs and plants, ones no dryad would shoot her through the fucking eye for taking. But more settlements meant dealing with humans, meant bandits, meant all the things traveling alone as a "woman" could mean. If anything went wrong, she’d be far from anything bigger than a creek to escape in. Her forearm-length dagger sat heavy against her thigh. She knew damn well how to use it. Vesemir had taught her what he could, during his rare and getting-rarer visits. But Lambert had taught herself which poisons to dip it in.

To Oxenfurt it was, then.

After a few miles, the road out of Ellander changed from a wide, flat path to a rough trail paved only by the hooves and wheels of travelers before her. Forest and brush to her right, vast fields of grain to her left. Early autumn gave the wind a bite against her cheeks, and brought the laborers out to the crops, ripe for the culling. Quickly, she tucked herself safely into the treeline, still within sight of the road, but deep enough to avoid any unfortunate encounters. Oxenfurt, not to mention all the fucking towns she’d have to stop in, would be full of them.

In her experience, the city was loud, stinking, and busy. Markets were constant, shifting things, slipping in and throughout the city, filling the air with, if she was lucky, the shit she actually needed to trade for. And the farther from the university, the closer to the port. Not that she needed _that_ as a cue. The stench of days-old rotting fish, soggy wood, and reused salt-lye would guide her just fine. Smells like home, she’d give it that.

From there, she could make her way along the river until she reached the sea, avoiding the usual sailors and driving off anyone else if need be. Even if she found a place to leave her horse and gear, taking the river itself was too risky. Discovery could mean death, if she was lucky. The other option didn’t bear thinking about. Traveling as a human woman already brought a host of dangers, traveling as a selkie among sailors would only make it worse. She wouldn’t shift unless she really had to. Vesemir’d made sure she could handle herself on land.

Even the blade had been a gift from the old man on his first visit to her, probably to make up for being a deadbeat father of surprise. Not that he’d ever mentioned it. The stupid old fuck still thought she didn’t recognize him after his first three-year absence, as if she wouldn’t know his sad, wrinkly face anywhere. Or the missing tip of his ear. But Lambert was more than happy to play along. Not only was it hilarious to fuck with him, he deserved some guilt. He’d taken her from her mother in the name of some-bitch-named-Destiny, the bastard hadn’t even bothered to raise Lambert himself. Just dumped her on an old friend —and Lambert was convinced he and Nenneke had fucked, at least once— and pissed off to his keep in the Blue Mountains. The old man could sweat a few decades longer. The mare beneath her snuffled, shaking her head.

“Fuck!”

Lambert startled. Quickly, she dug her heels into the stirrups, and did her best not to squeeze her legs into the horse’s sides, making an even bigger mess of the situation. After recovering her balance, she swore at ache in her thighs and back, then swore again looking at the sun’s position. If she stopped now to look for herbs, she’d have to dip straight into her rations, meaning she’d either have to buy more or preserve some herself later on. She slid off the mare to take stock. 

Reaching into the oiled leather saddlebags, Lambert counted five rashers of jerky, two sausages, a hunk of dry cheese, rosemary hardtack, a small cheesecloth filled with nuts…. her hand closed around hard stone. Even before she pulled it out, she grinned. The pestle was a heavy, dark-blue-grey granite, large enough for her big hands. _Fucking Nenneke._ Lambert knew the old hag liked her.

She went to go harvest those mushrooms she'd seen earlier.

———————————————————————

In her room once more, the High Priestess of the Venerable Temple of Melitele in Ellander, Nenneke, sighed and shut her door against the evening noise. Her brat-child was gone again, alone to the sea. She could only hope that the girl —because pushing fifty or not, Lambert was her _girl_ — would come back again. She’d always done so before, but who was to say this time? With that one, Nenneke couldn’t help but worry. Her lower back ached. Rubbing her forehead, surely exacerbating the wrinkles there, she sank into her chair. 

Something poked her in the ass. Right there, tucked in the crease between the cushions, sat a vial with a metal screw-top. Imprinted in the scratchy handwriting she knew well from so many attempts to translate it, sat three letters: HAG. Or, as Lambert explained, Holy Alleviating Grass. The yellowish oil inside, once she removed the top, smelled just as familiar, and she quickly capped it again. Nenneke laughed, and tucked away the vial for later. Tomorrow, she would smoke her old wood pipe out the window like a chimney stack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so it begins! If any of you like this concept so far, please comment, because otherwise I'll have to accept how deeply specific and self-indulgent this fic is. 
> 
> If anyone caught my Ea-Nasir reference, I love and respect u and you alone.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry ya'll... I got exams this week and it might be a minute before I update. Once they're over, I'll try to stick to an uploading schedule. I just had to get this out. Comments welcomed!


End file.
